BRUSSELS (AP) – With coronavirus cases on the rise in many places, governments faced the most serious dilemmas on Tuesday: continuing a vaccine known to save lives or suspending the use of AstraZeneca for reports of blood clots. dangerous blood in some recipients, even as the European regulator said there was “no indication” that the shooting was responsible.
It has created an irregular fracture around the world, forcing politicians to assess health risks to stop firing at a time when many countries, especially in Europe, are already struggling to overcome logistical barriers and hesitation. vaccination among their populations.
Sweden was the last to join a growing group of European Union nations choose caution over speed, although the head of the European Medicines Agency said the agency is “firmly convinced” that the benefits of shooting AstraZeneca outweigh the risks.
Emer Cooke noted on Tuesday that thousands of people across the EU develop thrombosis each year for a variety of reasons and that there have been no reports of increased blood clots in clinical trials of the AstraZeneca vaccine. Still, experts would conduct a “very rigorous analysis” and make a recommendation Thursday, he said.
Europe has the luxury of being able to choose from several vaccine candidates, but the decision is still not easy on the continent, where the virus is rising again and where the vaccination campaign has repeatedly stumbled.
The choice can be even more intense elsewhere, because many countries rely heavily on AstraZeneca, which is cheaper and easier to handle than some other features. The vaccine has so far played a huge role in the global initiative to ensure that vaccines reach the poorest countries known as COVAX.
The difficulty of the decision was clear in Thailand, the first country outside Europe to temporarily suspend use of the AstraZeneca vaccine, and it only withdrew on Tuesday, when its prime minister received a dose.
“There are people who have concerns,” Prayuth Chan-ocha said after receiving the shot. “But we have to believe in doctors, believe in our medical professionals.”
Many other Asian countries have also abandoned concerns, though Indonesia stopped using the shot this week, saying it would wait for a World Health Organization report on the issue.
In addition to the EMA, AstraZeneca and the WHO have said there is no evidence that the vaccine carries a higher risk of blood clots. There have been 37 reports of blood clots among the more than 17 million people who have received the vaccine across the EU and Britain, the company said.
“This is much lower than expected to occur naturally in a general population of this size and is similar in other licensed COVID-19 vaccines,” the Anglo-Swedish pharmacist said.
But the number of bloc countries following the shooting falls after heavyweights such as Germany, Italy, France and Spain said they suspended it.
This left Belgium – and a handful of others like Poland, Romania and Greece – increasingly isolated in their insistence that stopping the shootings now would cause far more harm than the much-discussed side effects now.
“When it is known how the virus is going around, it would be very unwise to leave it,” Belgian Health Minister Frank Vandenbroucke told VRT on Tuesday.
Experts have noted that these concerns are inevitable in mass vaccination campaigns; with so many people getting shot, some are sick, even if the vaccine is not the culprit. This would mean that “we should interrupt campaigns non-stop for the next few months.”
“We wanted to stay as scientific as possible in the media-political turmoil that is currently shaking Europe,” said Belgian virologist Yves Van Laethem.
In Spain, which announced the suspension of the vaccine on Monday, some medical experts had doubts about the measure. Amós García, president of the Spanish Association of Vaccinology, said that countries were overzealous in curbing the use of AstraZeneca.
And the decisions seemed to have a snowball effect. “There is a cross-border contagion effect,” Garcia said.
“Anything triggers the precautionary principle,” Garcia told Spanish broadcaster TVE. “Once it starts, it’s like a domino, for a country it becomes very difficult to keep administering the vaccine,” if others stop, though only as a precaution.
With the torrent of decisions questioning the AstraZeneca vaccine despite expert assurances, public opinion was once again tested to believe the science about the suspicions.
Serbian Prime Minister Ana Brnabic said the Balkan country will not stop using Astra-Zeneca vaccines and insisted that “unfortunately, some people are thinking because of a negative campaign.”
So often in disarray during vaccine collection, the EU of 27 countries was once again out of bounds, and member states each made their own decision, as the Executive Committee called on everyone to pay attention. of the EMA councils. When asked if EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen would take the AstraZeneca vaccine, her spokesman Eric Mamer said “of course”.
___
Jordans reported from Berlin. PA reporters from around the world contributed to this report.
___
Follow AP pandemic coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic, https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-vaccine and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak.